Logs, Roads and Wilderness 



Montana Governor Ted Schwinden criticiz- 

 ed the Lolo plan for underestimating the value of 

 hunting and for allowing a projected 63 percent in- 

 crease in stream sediments during the first ten years 

 of the plan.*'^ But wildlife experts were most alarm- 

 ed by the pace of logging in the Deerlodge National 

 Forest, which by 1982 still had not drafted a plan. 



State officials focused on the Upper Willow 

 Creek tributary, where they said logging was resum- 

 ing without the monitoring promised to the Rock 

 Creek Advisory Committee. They complained that 

 a district ranger— rather than the Deerlodge forest 

 supervisor — was handling the sales. So-called 

 "ranger authority sales"required less adv-ertising and 

 thus less public scrutiny. The Department of Fish, 

 Wildlife and Parks called for a halt to ranger authori- 

 ty sales and urged the following actions: Rock Creek 

 must be removed from the timber base and treated 

 as a special management area, with all logging and 

 roading in either forest addressed in a single plan. 

 The economic values of competing resources in the 

 drainage must be analyzed independently. Water 

 quality must be monitored as recommended by the 

 Rock Creek Advisory Committee; the committee 

 itself must be revived. ^^ 



Despite these recommendations, both the 

 Lolo and the Deerlodge Forest Plans drafted in 1985 

 failed to mention the water quality agreement made 

 with the Rock Creek Advisory Committee. By now, 

 logging was planned even for Sand Basin Creek on 

 the Deerlodge, where the committee had warned 

 that erosive "granitic" soils increased the chance of 

 stream pollution.*'* 



In January of 1985, the Philipsburg district 

 ranger published an article in The Philipsburg Mail 

 detailing 10 active and 11 proposed sales. The sales 

 would yield about 33 million board feet of 

 timber — more than 4,000 acres of clearcut — in the 

 Rock Creek drainage.*' The news awakened the dor- 

 mant Rock Creek Advisory Committee, whose 

 members didn't wait for an invitation to reconvene. 

 Alarmed, they sent a letter demanding to see 

 records of Deerlodge National Forest monitoring; 

 they asked why the Forest Service had failed to 

 monitor water quality before holding the timber 

 sales.''^ For the next three years, the committee met 

 informally at least every six months to keep tabs on 

 the Forest Service: they toured timber sale sites, 

 discussed monitoring techniques and reviewed log- 

 ging and road development plans. 



In a series of public meetings, they and 

 others complained that though Deerlodge officials 



had monitored stream flows and temperatures in 

 several places, none of the testing was matched with 

 timber sales or roads. Instead of monitoring 

 bedload, which is a good indicator of potential 

 harm from logging in the hilly, erosive soils of the 

 area, they said the Deerlodge was only monitoring 

 suspended sediment.*' Rock Creek Advisory Com- 

 mittee members said the Forest Service budget for 

 monitoring was too small. They demanded that 

 their original agreement be brought up to date and 

 carried out.*^ 



Exactly why standards slipped on the 

 Deerlodge after the Rock Creek Advisory Commit- 

 tee disbanded is still open to dispute. "It was part- 

 ly technical and partly forgetting," says Lolo Forest 

 Supervisor Orville Daniels. Financial problems, per- 

 sonnel changes and political maneuvers within the 

 Forest Service all played a part.*' Rallies in 

 Philipsburg in the mid-1980s drew as many as 300 

 people to argue for jobs first, fish second. For 

 Deerlodge Supervisor Frank Salomonsen, in his 

 Butte office, this constituency eventually drowned 

 out the grumbling from Missoula-based conserva- 

 tionists. Salomonsen's strategy was to ignore the 

 rigorous monitoring required for Rock Creek until 

 regional headquarters agreed to help pay for it.'o 

 That never happened. Instead, the public outcry 

 forced the Deerlodge to comply. 



Supervisors of both the Lolo and the 

 Deerlodge agreed publicly to consider delaying log- 

 ging in light of charges that timber sales were not 

 being monitored with the "intent and spirit "of the 

 original Rock Creek Advisory Committee agree- 

 ment. '■ Salomonsen agreed not only to provide 

 records of all monitoring, but to establish a task 

 force of fisheries biologists and foresters represen- 

 ting both national forests and the Montana Depart- 

 ment of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.'' The task force 

 would help decide what information was needed 

 on potential pollution from logging. 



At a meeting with state wildlife officials and 

 Rock Creek Advisory Committee members, Forest 

 Service representatives tried to gauge the acceptable 

 factor of risk to the fishery. Officials of the Depart- 

 ment of Fish, Wildlife and Parks were emphatic: 

 they would accept no riskJ^ Deerlodge Supervisor 

 Salomonsen went almost as far: he pledged himself 

 anew to a "minimal risk" approach to water quali- 

 ty and fisheries and a critical look at proposed 

 timber sales in the drainage.''' 



Both forests also agreed to study the sedi- 

 ment impact of logging in sensitive soils, and to 



